There’s a story in the new Testament about a group of people that were so overthrown by the love of God that they soon became overthrown by a love for each other:

“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” ~ Acts 4:32-35

On the night of Jesus’ death, just before His arrest, He prayed for something similar – that we’d all be “one;” not everyone “on the same page,” but that we’d share the kind of oneness He shared with God, an impossible level of intimacy and interdependence. He could’ve prayed for anything – “God, make them get along,” or “make sure they all vote a certain way,” but He wanted something much deeper, something that smacks of a political ideology that doesn’t have a good track record in human history.

When I think of the word “socialism,” something akin to the story above is what comes to mind – an entire nation of people who are so overthrown by care for one another that we go to extremes to make sure that everyone has what they need, regardless of what we might need to sacrifice.

Of course, we’ll never get there. Nations have tried, and quickly devolve into people making sacrifices for the benefit of corrupt politicians.

But because I’m in love with the idea of America falling more deeply in love with itself, it bothers me when politicians push for legislation that seeks to help people, and some from my Christian camp cry out “Socialists!!!” firmly convinced that these campaigns will drive our country into a hopeless communist abyss.

Rest assured that it wasn’t socialism that brought about the demise of Russia, or Germany. It was, and will always be, political corruption. That’s not a commentary on whether or not socialism can destroy a country; we’ll never know because corruption was so strong in those administrations – it trumped everything else. To me it seems that whenever a government tries to marshall the benevolence of its people, things get evil, fast.

But, from my perspective, there are people in our country who are having a difficult time making things work. They struggle daily against political systems rigged to ensure that nothing changes. Because I live close to the inner city, the first group that comes to mind for me are non-white, single parents. They’re behind the curve, unable to get ahead.

If these people simply needed to get their act together, I’d argue that we don’t have a political problem.  Of course, if you’ve read any of my previous posts on this, I don’t think their plight is their fault. Sure, there are lazy, entitled people of all races in our country, but they’re the exceptions; we’ve got systems rigged in favor of white people at the expense of everyone else. As a Jesus-follower, I think those systems need to be dealt with, severly so.

That, for me, for example, is the Affordable Care Act. I don’t think it’s been managed well, and it’s full of flaws, but its chief aim is to make healthcare accessible to people who otherwise have none .  I know some of you think it’s a mindless agenda hell bent on sucking our country into a communist abyss, but I haven’t seen any supporting data (I’m open to it – share your thoughts below, I’ll engage).

I worry about people who don’t have enough money to visit a doctor when the need comes up. It makes me sad to think about a single mom who’s already struggling, unable to take her kid(s) to regular checkups. A system like that guarantees that those kids, lacking pre-emptive care, are more likely to develop complications.

When they do, mom takes them to the ER, and we all pay for it, because she can’t. We can bitch about Obamacare all we want, but, in addition to our need to address broken systems, people without healthcare are a huge burden on our economy. If nothing else, only a daft, irresponisble government would fail to respond to the $$$ issues that come up when so many don’t have health care.

In general, flawed as our political attempts to care for the poor might be, I think we need to keep making them, and I’ve come to believe that liberal politicians will do more work in this arena. That’s not to say that I think liberals are more righteous than conservatives. There’s evil on both sides of the hill to be sure.

You might say, “Wow, Mark, you’ve really drunk the Kool Aid.” And you’d be right, I have. The teachings of scripture, the words of Jesus, and the love of His church have overthrown my mind, and brought an impossible level of change to my life. Like every other Christian I’ve ever met, I vote my conscious, and it’s heavily influenced by my understanding of God and what seems to matter most.

If you’re unsure of what that is, or if you’re interested in what the Bible says about God’s values, I’ll leave you with a passage from the book of Matthew – a “final judgment” scene that illustrates very clearly what we’re all supposed to be up to.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ ~ Matthew 25: 31-46

Us Christians love to talk about “judgment day,” and how the sinners of this world will finally get theirs – gay people, abortion doctors, liberals, etc. This passage gives us a different picture of who the sinners are. I can’t say it doesn’t frighten me a bit.

I’m a hypocrite if all I do on behalf of the poor and marginalized is vote. Voting’s easy. It requires almost nothing of my time, resources, emotional energy, etc. The same goes for social media rants. If I’m a true Jesus follower, I’m not simply reading passages like this and saying, “Right on!” God’s values should ripple far beyond my political views.

While Jesus’ gospel might compel me to vote a certain way, that’s a tiny part of what a life overthrown by the love of God looks like.

A great relationship will cost you something. Cheezy as it sounds, nothing good comes easy.

But one thing that makes marriage feel impossible is something that few people will come to grips with. As a married human of almost 20 years, and someone who’s done a bit of coaching for others (and sat through more than a few of my own therapy sessions), I’d say this one can be a killer.

First, a little background:

Nobody makes it to adulthood without a significant amount of baggage, as we like to call it (in our culture, we love giving nice names to broken things; baggage is an understatement).

For now, let’s refer to it as “trauma.”

To my fellow male comrades, please don’t bail from this post just yet. I know that we’re the tough guys, conquerors of all things, but we get a bit squeamish when people start talking about feelings, emotions, etc. Feels like weakness.

Most of us struggle here, and need to understand: trauma, when it’s not faced, will suck the life out of life, and marriage, like nothing else. If this is the first time you’ve entertained the idea that this might apply to you, following are a few symptoms to help you dig deeper:

• • Fear of confrontation
  • Chronic anxiety
  • Anger problems
  • Self worth problems
  • Substance abuse problems
  • A need to be in control of everything
  • Problems taking responsibility for wrongdoing
  • A chronic sense that you’re being cheated
  • Fear of criticism
  • Anger when someone confronts you
  • A chronic feeling that others aren’t meeting your needs

As you can guess, things like this wreak havoc on a relationship, especially one where two people are living under the same roof, sharing the same financial resources, planning for the future, and raising kids.

If you’re an adult, well into your 30’s, you’ve experienced the dark side of humanity multiple times. People have mishandled you, betrayed you, hurt you. We like to believe that we’re strong, that we’re “over it,” but that’s rarely the case. Only those who’ve come to grips with their wounds, and who’ve taken couragous steps to heal, can claim to have moved on.

Not many of us are in that boat.

For most of us, we’ve stuffed it, what psychotherapeutical professionals call “repression,” a common practice that makes our emotional problems much more powerful. We bury our personal difficulties deep inside, failing to realize that they thrive there.

Then we get married, and this other person rubs their finger in our wounds like nothing else, digging up all the negative emotions that come part and parcel to the things we’ve been hiding from for so long. We feel anxiety, shame, fear, guilt, etc. like never before. And in our quest for a simple solution that absolves us from the pain of personal responsibility, we blame our spouse.

I have a friend who’s now divorced because her husband got tired of the anxiety in their relationship, little realizing that her anxiety was well placed before she ever met her ex-husband.

Whatever broken things we carry into our marriage will be brought to the surface by the rigors of a good relationship. But that’s a good thing. The closer we get to people, the harder it is to hide from the things we need to deal with.

But blaming the other person for the pain that we’re feeling is an easy way out, and the most common approach to a difficult relationship.

I’m tempted to try and offer some tactics for dealing with the stuff I’ve written above, but it’s best to leave you with this brief introduction, and invite you to consider the idea that the problems you’re having in your relationship might have been problems long before you got married.

Photo Credit: Asaf R

I entered middle school with a shaky sense of self worth, ripe for the bullies who took my problem to a much more permanent level. Picked on incessantly, I’d go to bed each night worried about how the next day would go, with nobody to talk to, feeling worthless.

What was so wrong that attractive, popular people felt it important to ridicule me?

In my college years I took steroids, hit the gym every time the doors were open, joined a fraternity, and took crap from nobody. After graduation, I started a career in aviation, flying all over the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, bragging to anyone who would bend an ear.

Nobody would have guessed that I hated who I was. No matter how cool my friends, or how impressive my career, or shapely my physique, I couldn’t shake the sense that there was something fundamentally wrong.

I had no understanding of my need for self-reconciliation.

In my early 30’s I turned to religion. While it was helpful to be part of a community that tried to avoid disparaging others, my newly found beliefs seemed to add to the idea that I was “bad.” But I also stumbled into something that changed everything, and taught me a fundamental truth about what self-reconciliation looks like.

If you’re struggling here, and miss this step, you’ll miss the boat entirely.

I had just taken a flying job in a small East Texas town, bunking with a bunch of other pilots in an old rental house that took up half a city block. It was a blast, and super cheap; our landlord didn’t care much about money, she just wanted someone to take care of the place.

My pilot friends ultimately moved on, and I found myself the sole resident of the “Mansion,” as we called it, so I invited an acquaintance to move in – he and I alone in a 5 bedroom, 5 bath, very large, possibly haunted house. Though our new friendship got off to a rocky start (I wasn’t easy to get along with), in a few years we became lifelong friends.

There was something about him that I had never experienced in other friendships, something that dealt an unprecedented blow to my self-rejection problems. He was a well-respected leader in our church, so I gave him some authority. I trusted him. When he spoke, I listened. When he communicated positive things, I believed them.

He rarely had anything negative to say about me, and regularly spoke into areas where he saw unique abilities; places of strength that might be used to serve and influence others. He spoke truth, over and over again, into a heretofore self-deprecating life.

HIs friendship jammed the tape that had been looping in my head: “You’re a loser,” “Everyone else is better than you,” “You’ll always fail.” He introduced the idea that, maybe, I wasn’t so bad after all.

My friend wasn’t a professional therapist with years of experience, he was simply a fellow human being, someone I trusted, who believed that I was good, and convinced me of the same. It was the most massive assault on my low self-worth that I had ever experienced.

Self-Reconciliation: The Way out Is Like the Way in.

The internet is awash with advice and resources, compelling us to think positively about ourselves, get therapy, exercise, take walks in the sunshine, meditate, do good deeds, etc. Nobody would argue the merits of these, but they miss two important truths about self-rejection.

First, it came at the hands of another human. We’re not born with it. It’s given to us.

Psychology Today lists the seven most common causes of low self-worth, all related to do with a human perpetrator – trauma, neglect, bullying, authority figures gone bad, overbearing religious folk – humans who sent a clear message: “There’s something fundamentally wrong with you.”

It’s not intentional. Most of the time these people love us. But their failure to love themselves, by definition, ripples far beyond them, deep into the unmovable places of our soul. And because they are close to us, and because we’re young and/or impressionable, we give them authority. When they speak, we listen.

It’s an easy sell.

Second, and most importantly, because our problem came at the hands of a trusted human, self-reconciliation can only come from another human, one we trust at least as much as the people who hurt us.

A to-do list alone, without the help of such an ally, will fail.

The best chance we have of digging out from self-rejection is to find a friend, a strong one, somebody who can see past our weaknesses into our strengths; somebody who loves us and wants to see us win. But it will have to be someone who we’re willing to give authority to, like we did with the people who lied about who we are. We’ll have to look up to them, trust them, and listen to the many ways that they’ll communicate our worth.

Rest assured that the world is full of them. They hang out in churches, community service organizations, soup kitchens, broken places. They probably won’t be the prettiest, or the most popular, but In helping others, they’ll know what it means to hurt. Many have navigated their own self worth problems, mourning when they see it in others, more than willing to help us up. Find one of these people and walk with them for a few years. They’ll lay into your lies like nothing else.

The Gospel’s Lost Child

Theologically speaking, Jesus’ gospel should leave us with a deep sense of personal value. New Testament Christianity is the only religious system that gives us a set of rules, tells us we can’t follow them, then gets the rules out of the way so we can see ourselves as God does. As a result, all of humanity is placed on the same level; I’m not better than you, you’re not better than me. The valleys have been filled and the mountains razed to the ground. We’re now free and compelled to appreciate, love, and celebrate us, all of us, including ourselves.

Unconditionally.

It’s brilliant.

In the same vein, It’s the only religion that places forgiveness in the dead center of everything, which has huge implications for our temptation to reject ourselves. For those of us with the guts to apply it, forgiveness keeps us from breaking relationships, judging others, marginalizing, etc; all favored American pastimes that lend to self-rejection.

But we don’t typically pitch forgiveness, or any other aspect of Jesus’ gospel as something that has the power to change the way we think about ourselves. We tend to place the most emphasis on i) the reconciliation of humanity to God, and ii) the reconciliation of us to everyone else. The reconciliation of us to ourselves (iii) is too quickly relegated to the field of mental health – it’s not a spiritual thing, much less a priority for God’s people.

We get a bit squeamish at the intersection of faith and psychotherapy.

That might explain why so many of us are wandering zombie-like through our life with God, placing far too much emphasis on rules, and marginalizing people who don’t follow them.

We’ve too frequently done the same to ourselves.

Ironically, the more I reject myself, for whatever reason, the more I feel the need to reject others, and vice versa, which ultimately bears the fruit of broken relationships, isolation, and distance from the only thing that might bring healing.

Humanity

The gospel, in all of its acts, should bring us into an impossible level of reconciliation. But when we remove one of its fundamental parts, say, the reconciliation of us to God, or, as we’re seeing in today’s political arena, the reconciliation of us to each other, the whole thing unravels, as it does if I ignore the part that aims to reconcile me to myself.

We are right to emphasize the unconditional grace of God in His work on the cross, and we’d be fools to believe something so monumentally impossible and not extend the same forgiveness and weight to others. But, I would argue, ignoring the gospel’s third act will not only solidify the ill effects of self-rejection, it will always result in making the rest of the gospel nearly impossible to live out.

And it’s just plain bad theology.

Photo Credit: Danielle MacInnes